Graffiti vandalism has declined markedly in Whangarei, though a small number of hardcore offenders are still doing prolific damage. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Graffiti vandalism has declined markedly in Whangarei, though a small number of hardcore offenders are still doing prolific damage. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Four offenders who seemingly do nothing all day but tag the town are a major headache for Whangarei's graffiti clean-up crew.
"There's four names that keep popping up from one end of town to the other," said Te Ora Hou D'Tag worker Bill Davis. "It's like they wake up solelyto go and graffiti."
Whangarei District Council figures show there are about a third as many tags being removed from property in the city as one year ago, but four individuals were causing a big problem. D'Tag worker Pomare Pou said he agreed that overall, tagging vandalism was trending downwards, with most damage by the same few people.
"These tags are big and bold and really visual. In saying that, there's still a significant drop in tagging overall," he said.
"We passed a couple of their tags yesterday out at Hikurangi ... It's from there right through to the Smeatons Dr [Raumanga] and everywhere in between " they're targeting the more prominent sites in the catchment."
Mr Davis said it was very disheartening cleaning the same wall over and over again.
"Do you know how people feel when it's on their fence that they've just put up and is brand new? It causes a lot of grief to homeowners ... It gets a bit upsetting going back to the same wall."
All tags removed by D'Tag were photographed and went into the "Stop Tags" database monitored by police and council. "Through the work of the database they're tracking the kids that tag. A number of main taggers around town they've tracked and some have been put on curfew, hence the number has gone down," Mr Pou said.
Council's community services manager Owen Thomas said the variety of tags is slowly reducing.
"We profile taggers and do some great work with police and the wider community to identify and follow these offenders up. Whangarei has done a great job this year of looking after its public spaces and recognising the damage vandalism does to our neighbourhoods and the wider district. If anyone wants to let us know who is destroying their neighbourhood with tagging give City Safe a call on 0800 258 258."
